The End Is Nigh

My first year of graduate classes at the University of Baltimore is almost over. This semester, I’ve been taking a class called Experimental Forms, in which we read experimental works of fiction and write experimentally, based on these readings, as well as a workshop in screenwriting and my second graduate-level workshop in fiction (I’d only taken a single undergrad workshop before I came here, to a grad program). Last semester, I took my first graduate fiction workshop and a class called Creativity: Ways of Seeing. All of these, except Screenwriting, are required for my degree. Screenwriting is just an elective—it’s the icing on the cake, considering that I want to write movies and/or for television.

Since late last week, I’ve managed to write three short stories and a reader’s response essay, but I still feel a little overwhelmed by what I have left. In retrospect, it was not a good idea to take three grad-level writing classes in one semester. Anyway, by next Monday at midnight, I have to have my screenplay and treatment finished/revised and turned in. Monday is also the due date for my final experimental piece, but that is one of the short stories that I’ve written in the last few days; I just need to edit, and it will be good to go. Furthermore, my professor said we don’t have to turn it in on Monday, since we won’t be meeting for class; that means I’ll turn it in on Wednesday, which is when the rest of my final projects are due (for Fiction). For that class, I have to put together a portfolio of everything I’ve written this semester, including any revisions, and then I have to write a reader’s response to a short story from our class’s anthology. I’ve already done that, but I’ll still need to find time to edit before next Wednesday. It’s based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s incredibly touching “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine.”

For now, I’m mostly/only worried about my screenplay. It’s not done, for one thing, but I also don’t feel it is up to par on a line level. So I have to finish the storyline and do at least one revised draft of the entire thing, if I can manage that.

I can’t wait for this semester to be over. But then, that breaks open a whole new problem: I need a job so I can afford to stay in Baltimore. I will almost have enough to cover my fixed expenses for two months—almost. But I wouldn’t be able to spend any more money than that, and that’s just not going to work. So I need to make up for those extra expenses, and then pay all my expenses for August. It’s not a ton of money, in the grand scheme of things, but for a poor graduate student in Baltimore, it’s still a lot.

I just hope there are jobs to be had. In the meantime, I’m seriously considering ChaCha, but I don’t think that will really help that much, and even then, it will only help at all if I can pass all the required tests and get “hired.” I can’t believe I’m actually considering this, but I may end up having to go to the nearest Burger King or something. Since I worked for Burger King for 4 years, under both terrible and amazing management, you should consider that a sign of desperation.

It wouldn’t be so bad. Would it? If I’m making money, who cares what kind of crappy job it is?

Which reminds me, I need to find out if taking a graduate assistantship would affect my loan eligibility in any way because there’s a chance I could end up with a (bad but still paying) assistantship next year.

All This Busyness Business

Wow, it’s a busy week.

Sunday, Justin and I went to the aquarium with Lori, Kari, Eli, Wendy, and Danielle. It was a University of Baltimore event night. UB students got in for free; it was only $5 or $6 for Justin. Not bad, considering it’s normally $25 to go, and I don’t think they’re usually open at night. After walking around there for about an hour, and taking lots of pictures (*placeholder for pictures*), we went to ESPN Zone to eat and watch some of the All-Star game (for Lori, Wendy, and Eli) and Olympics. Then we went home. I had to go to bed early because I had to get up at…

7:30, or so, a.m. the next day. I have to work, so I walk Justin to his parking spot at Penn Station (because of the snow emergency in Maryland, there’s no guest parking at my apartment for the time being). He drives me back to the school, and we say goodbye. He goes home. I get my keys from the Public Safety desk and go across the street to the Business Center so I can clock in for work. Since I had a migraine the morning before, I haven’t finished my reading for class tonight. I work on it during any break I can get from work. It’s a pain.

I read at the desk; I read on lunch break; I read after work, at home, where I finally finish the reading. I finalize my writing assignment and print it out. I try to come up with a screenplay idea for my screenwriting class but get nothing. I make a sandwich for tonight since I won’t have much time for dinner because I have class from 5:30 to 10:45 p.m., with a fifteen-minute break between classes.

I go to screenwriting. It’s fun. We do a collaborative “screenplay idea” project, and my group actually comes up with a great idea. The professor has brought snacks, but ironically, this is the only class time in which we won’t watch any movie clips; and it’s because the snow day has caused us to cram material together.

In Experimental Forms, the professor says that he hadn’t contacted us during the snow break (no shit?) and that he decided we will just push everything forward a bit and try to fix the missing class later on. He couldn’t have told us that? So we didn’t break our backs trying to read the assigned reading, as well as finish the writing assignment from the class period that we lost? Oh well. Some of us hadn’t finished the reading anyway, but we all have the writing assignment done. Which we read next, out loud, one at a time. There are around twenty of us, so it takes most of class. One of us doesn’t read; she’s like that sometimes; she’s pretty shy. But she could at least give it a shot instead of saying, “My name is _____. I don’t want to read mine.” She’s the only one who doesn’t read. There’s no way she can keep this up and get a good participation grade. Then again, I’m not feeling so hot about my grade tonight either. I don’t speak much because of the nature of tonight’s class. I can’t comment on things read out loud to me (for the first time, at least), on the fly. I need to see it in front of me and have time for thoughts to fester. I’m not going to like these writing exercise classes. *sigh*

After class, I say goodnight to Mike and Lori and walk home with Kari. We say goodnight at the door and each go to our separate rooms. I come back out and pour some cereal. I eat while surfing the Internet—getting caught up on my YouTubes and checking my e-mail. I have a long e-mail to respond to but don’t have the energy or time tonight. I feel bad because I’ve been neglecting people today. Hélène had called during work, and I haven’t called her back yet. I realize I don’t have to work at 9 a.m. the next morning like I thought; I’m scheduled for noon. I stay up a bit longer, surfing, talking to Justin via IM. I get hungry again and eat some pretzels and Cheez-Its. I go to bed, trying to think of story ideas as I drift off to sleep.

I’m at work now—noon, not 9—writing this. I have to write a story for tomorrow’s Fiction class. I have an e-mail to write and a phone call to return. And a tax return to re-send, because I put the wrong zip code or something. I’m overwhelmed.

I’ll have class tomorrow evening. I’ll finish the story during the day (or not; he had said we don’t have to have them finished, per se). I’ll try to do the tax return, the e-mail, the phone call. I’ll relax at 9 p.m. with LOST on ABC. 🙂

I’ll try to remain sane.

I might succeed.

P. S. I want a Tivo. And a new camera, or two.

UPDATE: Sent the e-mail, finished the tax return. I’ll make the phone call soon. Then I’ll get caught up on my TV (still have to watch last week’s Supernatural and this week’s Life Unexpected), get dinner, and get ready for LOST.

Baltimore Blizzard Bastard; Second Semester Starts; Sorry, So Sorry

*Sorry I haven’t been updating you. It’s been hectic. But maybe that’s not an excuse. Anyway, I wrote this as an e-mail to a family member and thought it was actually perfect for a blog entry. So here you go, blog reader(s)! A slight adaptation of a family e-mail. Pry away into my private life, gentle readers!

Hello,

I’ve been busy with school starting back up. Last week was my second week of class; this week will be the third—assuming we have class, that is. I love it, but there’s a lot going on.

I’m taking a screenwriting class this semester (along with a fiction workshop and a class on experimental writing, called Experimental Forms). It’s neat that part of my work for class is to watch movies and TV shows, and then analyze scripts! Exciting. In fact, I just finished reading the screenwriting textbook for that course a couple of hours ago. It’s really interesting to me, so I decided to just read it all. Besides, I thought it would be good to have read and annotated it already so I can just use it to refer back to while I’m working on my script ideas. That frees up larger blocks of time later on, even though it took longer than I expected to read the book initially! Now I can just refresh my memory real quick on those days where I’m supposed to have read a section (he assigned it in 4 large chunks, to be spaced out between early February and late March, after which time we are going to be writing our scripts), and then I can focus on my ideas and perfecting my writing craft and document styles.

This is the closest I’ve ever been to what I want to do with my life. It’s shaping up to be an exciting, productive, educational semester for me.

As for the Baltimore snow, yeah, we apparently got about 28 inches of snow Friday/Saturday. It’s pretty crazy here. I live close to campus, though. It’s just a couple of blocks away. We don’t have campus housing at UBalt. Baltimore’s not really equipped for that, I guess, or perhaps it’s just UBalt that has that issue. There’s barely enough room for the class buildings! Haha. We have partnerships with a few of the local apartment buildings, though; mine is one of them. It’s called Sutton Place. Actually, I can look out my kitchen window and see the Student Center—big glass building, can’t miss it.

Kari and I have a great view, here at our apartment. It looks especially pretty right now, with all the snow. I should take pictures if I can remember to.

Speaking of pictures, I need to save for a new camera, eventually; this one’s about had it. After being spoiled with expensive/nice video cameras and learning a lot about manual controls in my video production class at Wabash last spring, I now want a still camera that is more up-to-date and has more creative control than my ailing Nikon Coolpix 3200. Nikon’s D5000—the one on Amazon with 2 VR kit lenses, one at 18-55mm and the other at 55-200mm—looks pretty great for a first-timer, with manual controls and everything, but it’s expensive. Not even a priority right now. I need to read more about photography anyway so I know what I’m doing with it if/when I finally get one! And then there’s the worry that I won’t actually use it enough to warrant buying. I certainly don’t use my current camera that often (I use my iPhone camera more!), but maybe I would use a newer one more. Who knows?

Ah, I’m starting to babble. I supposed I should go to bed.

Stay warm, Baltimoreans et al.!

Best,

Roger

Where the Wild Things Are

Okay, so there’s probably not much point in blogging about Where the Wild Things Are now, two days after seeing it, but I still want to say a few things. First of all, I really liked it; it’s probably one of my favorite movies, in fact. Visually, it is stunning. While the shaky cam can get a little hard to deal with if you are in the front row like I was, I’m sure that, under normal circumstances, it is mostly effective and only slightly offputing. The most problematic part, meaning the worst of the shaky cam, is the first few minutes.

But what the shaky cam does is try to capture the excitement, spontaneity, and liveliness of being young. The cuts, tracking shots, and shaky cam in the opening scenes combine to give the viewer a sense of what it’s like to be Max—leaping about in a wolf costume, chasing after animals, having a snowball fight, and burrowing into a homemade igloo. I find myself shocked when the older kid jumps on top of the igloo with Max inside it. That scene is unexpected, and it is partially because of the camera movements and cuts that it is effective. The speed of everything is quick until the kid jumps on the igloo, and then everything stops. Cuts get fewer, the camera gets less shaky, and we focus in on Max, crying and furious. I could say more about this, and I’m sure I haven’t done an adequate job with what I did say, but I need to move on because I’ve got lots to do today!

So next, the writing, the imagination. I am incredibly pleased with what goes into this film. There is actually very little in terms of text in the original story, so the writers have to fill in the blank spots to make the movie. They have to add backstory and relationships for the wild things, complexities that one doesn’t find in the book. They also have an interesting reason for why Max is in trouble, one that is very relatable and real. And in a familiar twist, it’s not just one thing that lands him in trouble. It’s a build-up. He trashes his sister’s room after her friends destroy his igloo (and jump on him, in the process), but his mom doesn’t blow up yet; she’s disappointed, of course, and angry, but she doesn’t really blow up until Max acts out just before dinner, jumping on the kitchen counter in his wolf costume, saying, “I’ll eat you up,” and then biting her when she tries to admonish him.

As for the island of wild things, I realize right away that Max arrives there in a different way in the movie: Instead of being sent to his room and turning his bedroom into an island of wild things, he runs out of the house after his mom yells at him, runs through the woods, stumbles on a boat in a river/lake, and rides it to the island. He somehow manages to turn the river/lake into an ocean, and his mind transforms the woods he is running around in into an island full of wild monsters. Once “there,” Max meets the wild things and sees their complex relationships and problems. For the first time, we get some actual insight into the wild things of this wonderful children’s story, and I find myself completely fascinated with what the writers come up with. I see that the problems they have are a combination of the problems a child would run into and the (grownup) problems he/she would encounter in life (i.e., he sees his mom’s relationships and projects them onto the monsters that he imagines, he sees the discord of his own childhood fights and inserts them into his made-up world, and so on). I even notice that, at the end, his mom’s face bears a striking resemblance to the wild things, KW in particular. The fort that Max and the wild things build reminds me of the scene in which Max is laying in his bed, upset, and the camera shows a huge rubber band ball in the foreground. In other words, Max seems to drag the tiniest things from his ordinary life into his imagination when he creates his fantastic island of wild things. The fort also resembles his igloo from the opening scenes of the movie. Forts are Max’s specialty, it seems, and he builds them all in similar fashion.

As for dialogue, that aspect is closely related to the writing, but I will say that the dialogue feels very childlike. And that is a very good thing. Even as I try to get myself into a child’s mindset for this movie, I find myself laughing at the ridiculousness of some of Max’s words and plans (e.g., that the fort will somehow debrain anyone that enters without being welcome). Max has a quick wit, and everything he says in the movie is believable as something a child would say. Children think so differently than grownups and even teenagers; whatever they dream up can be a reality, even if only in their heads. This is one of the most inspiring aspects of the movie, the idea of childlike creativity, the kind we forget about when we grow up. I struggle now, even as a writer, to be as creative as I was when I was a kid, to be as creative as Max.

This movie helps me remember my place in the world, as a grownup (my, that’s weird to say), but it also helps me hold onto that childlike mentality. It helps me tap into my creativity, and for that, I am in love with this movie.

And I’ll definitely be buying it.

Welcome!

Salut mes amis,

As you may have guessed after reading the title of this blog, if you did indeed do so, my name is Roger William Market, and I am a budding writer from Indiana. In May 2009, I graduated from Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN with a B.A. in English and a minor in history. See my About the Writer page for all the poop on my education and my literary, TV, and movie tastes. If you are interested, that is.

With that out of the way, I’d like to welcome you into my life, or at least the online portion of it. I’m not entirely sure what this blog is going to be, but I imagine it will serve as a documentation of my M.F.A. journey and my life in Baltimore (and who knows where after that), a dumping ground for some of my writings and ideas, and a source for my musings, reviews, and/or rants about literature, TV, movies, and probably some other topics that I can’t foresee at 3 o’clock this fine morning. I really should be getting into bed.

And on that note, I think I will!

Until my next post,

Roger